Go fax your innovation ideas

If you’ve been one of the millions of people boosting U.S. cable ratings by tracking the political mayhem of the last 18 months, you’ve probably seen a commercial for an American computer security company in which, during a bank robbery, a security guard stands by passively, telling customers who have thrown themselves on the floor, “I’m not a security guard, I’m a security monitor. I just report that there’s a bank robbery. There’s a bank robbery.”

Canadians are like that in regard to innovation. We are innovation monitors. We are innovation observers. We are innovation analysts, promoters and helpers. (What Canadian university doesn’t now have a vice president for innovation?) We are innovation policy-makers and prophets. What we aren’t — the overwhelming majority of us — is actual innovators.

My bet is the next federal budget will give us even more innovation monitoring and helping. The prime minister’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, led by the head of a major consultancy firm, has recommended a hands-on approach to encouraging sectoral strategies. There are related rumblings in Ottawa about making aid to business less passive, more aggressive. David Akin had a piece in Saturday’s National Post about how the deputy minister of what is now called “Innovation, Science and Economic Development” has been scouring the country for ideas about what works and what doesn’t, presumably with a view to lining up a new wave of federal helpers to urge businesses to adopt the good ideas he’s collected. Apparently, he has been talking a lot to Canadian Tire — perhaps trying to find out how more Canadian companies can make money selling already-opened packages (which at my local Canadian Tire the packages always are).